The results are spread on a gazillion ad-littered pages whose content are shorter than this text field. Even the print page has ads on it and only includes the current page you're viewing. How do I mod article -1?

You see, a website gets paid on the "page views" of ads, so it makes tons of sense from their (the website developers & publishers) perspective to do galleries instead of articles. An honest article page would be just 1 page. Instead, they break down the article's paragraphs into separate page views and put them into these ad-riddled galleries, thus generating 5...10...15+ times the pa

The results are spread on a gazillion ad-littered pages whose content are shorter than this text field. Even the print page has ads on it and only includes the current page you're viewing. How do I mod article -1?

Clearly their webdeveloper discovered they were at the bottom end of the scale...

Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ) was a monthly journal published in the United States by CMP Technology. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on microcomputer software, rather than hardware. It later became a monthly section within the periodical InformationWeek called Dr. Dobb's Report and is now a news website published by United Business Media

I've looked at moving to Germany...it's not a slam dunk career move. When you factor in exchange rates, cost of living, take home pay AFTER taxes, etc, the US is still the better choice by a large margin compared to any other place . It looks like Canada is #2, Australia #3 as far as IT worker living standard goes. Then there is the culture shock, homesickness, political chaos, social isolation, the German expectation of punctuality. It's the most modernized country in the old world...aka the cool old archi

As an American living and working in Germany for over a decade you really need to watch how you are getting over here.
Cost is alot more than living in the USA, and normal german pay can be lower. Then you are stuck with taxes, as a USA citizen you have to file for taxes no matter where you earned them, and Germany now wants a cut. However tax deals between the countries can help you alot in that matter and some companies pay the USA taxes that you would owe.
You will want to travel, after all that is why

The tradeoff is that you have better insurance. Lose your job? Still have healthcare. Vacation? Guaranteed more than you'll ever get in the US, and if you don't take it your boss will make you. In the US if you take all your vacation you can be looking at finding a new job with a lot of employers.

If you're relatively low skill (waiter waitress type job) you can get paid a lot more in europe than the US. The downside is that paying for restaurants can be a lot more expensive than the US.

On average the US is better off (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_per_capita_personal_income) in terms of disposable income. But a lot of that wealth is concentrated towards people who are doing well. If you can be in the top 1% it's better to be an american than a german. if you're in the bottom 20 or 30%, german rather than american. Everyone in between those points is more of a lifestyle choice. Some people would prefer 5 weeks vacation and are happy taking trains to travel, some people prefer the freedom of their own car and working more.

I suggest you visit germany. they're probably the least fucked up nation in the world. plenty of cool old stuff too, even in the places that got totaled in ww2.and beer & etc is cheap as.. well, water.

as for political chaos, wtf? comparing usa vs. germany in political chaos? who's leader is going around ordering assassinations again? germany is so stable they've managed to keep europes mexicos out of trouble for past 30 years!

The cost of living in Munich is definitely lower than in San Francisco or San Jose, since we're talking about IT jobs. I don't know what you mean with "social isolation".

Of course taxes are higher, and I'm proud of that. If I lose my job, I don't lose healthcare for my family, and I'll have a decent unemployment benefit. If I cannot afford a private pension, I still have a generous and sustainable public pension, and my kids will be able to go to college FOR FREE, as I did. In big companies workers can elect half of the Board of Directors, so that the company is managed in the interest of BOTH shareholders AND employees. And companies cannot lay off people without a just cause.

My parents are former factory workers (you know, those that are kindly called "losers" in your country), if I was born in the USA I could have never afforded to pay for college, and I would be a factory worker too.

I have co-workers over in Germany; the biggest thing I complain about is their benefit of 6 weeks of vacation time a year. Seems like every other week they're able to call off... I'm somewhat jealous, told them I'll move over any time!

You're an idiot for comparing "Feasible" with "Free", he's saying- It's a birth right, you're saying if you work yourself to death doing odd work during the years of your life you're supposed to spend studying to become more intelligent and an eventual net gain to your family and country you might just get one.

You tell me which one's better- yes yours works, but it doesn't even compare. So don't compare them. People always bring up your point when the free things other countries provide are mentioned, an

You're an idiot for comparing "Feasible" with "Free", he's saying- It's a birth right, you're saying if you work yourself to death doing odd work during the years of your life you're supposed to spend studying to become more intelligent and an eventual net gain to your family and country you might just get one.

Studying doesn't make you more intelligent, it makes you more educated. This is fundamental attribution error often seen in highly educated people who like to believe themselves more intelligent for it.

You tell me which one's better- yes yours works, but it doesn't even compare. So don't compare them. People always bring up your point when the free things other countries provide are mentioned, and it's just stupid.

I agree that education up to a certain level should be considered a birthright, but you quickly hit a point of diminishing returns when you attempt to educate everyone to the same level. Some people are in fact not educable -- this is the major legitimate complaint about the "No Child Left Behind" policies

Benefiting the citizenry is not the same thing as benefiting society, and the point of services provided by society needs to be to benefit the society, not the individual. If it benefits the citizenry as well, that's a nice side effect, but it should not be the primary underlying goal.

Setting the price point at or lower than the necessary price point to achieve the societal benefit is all that's necessary. In the case of higher education, this is achievable at a non-zero price point. And yes, this means

I went to munich back in 2008 and let me tell you there is still pleanty of "old" history there,along with the new. While there we went to the BMW museum (which opened the weekend I was there, got to see the new 7 series at the time photoshoot take place) the olympic park from the 70s. We went to the augistiner brewery beer garden where oktoberfest is held. http://www.augustiner-braeu.de/augustiners/html/en/index.html [augustiner-braeu.de] Dachau was a very humbling experience, but very vivid. And the center of munich still ha

I'd be interested to hear the stories from people who did make it over there, any good ones?

Been here in Germany 5 years now. Loving it. The take-home pay is lower due to higher taxes, but that's MORE than offset by the social benefits that my tax money buys. No toll roads anywhere; excellent public transport at amazingly low prices; 10 euro per quarter is the most I'll ever pay for medical attention (regardless of what needs done)...

There are things I don't like about living here, but quality of life in general is very high.

It looks like Canada is #2, Australia #3 as far as IT worker living standard goes.

I can't speak for Canada, but in Sydney, Australia where I spent 6 yea

The tone you're setting is wrong, because it implies that all white people are racist and somehow dedicate every waking moment to ruining and isolating non-white people. In reality most of the wide array of cultures and ethnic groups in America tend to bulk together out of comfort and stability by choice, not because they are rounded up and placed in isolation camps. People want to spend time typically with other people that are like them which includes taste in art, skill set, and (tada) ethnic origin. You see this all over the world and it establishes unique and interesting subcultures.

On the note of racism though which is always applied to white people oddly, I'd like to point out that non-whites are equally racist and (unlike white people) are often more willing to admit it because there is no focus on shaming them for it. One example is the shooting in Florida where the man is half hispanic and half white. The man claims himself to be hispanic as his primary race, but the minute people started saying he was racist they started calling him white or "half white". They completely stripped him of his willfully claimed ethnicity, mostly because saying a white man hates black people will sell better than a hispanic hates black people.

People want to spend time typically with other people that are like them which includes taste in art, skill set, and (tada) ethnic origin.

Ethnic, maybe, racial no, not really. You don't see tall people hanging together and short people hanging in a different group; or blue eyed people hanging together and green-eyed people in a different group.

The only reason people in the USA tend to hang out with others of the same racial ethnicity is leftovers of the horrible segregation that ruled the land a mere 40 ye

Correct, which is why I started by saying "[culturally] ethnic, maybe". For example, people who like kimchi and the latest South Korean soap opera are likely to hang together and talk about it, be it physically or in a blog in cyberspace. And no, you don't have to be born in Korea to count yourself among that group, as many Japanese fans of Bae Yong Joon and kimchi can attest.

On the other hand we have racially imposed divisions and classifications, such as the American coinage of Latina, which creates a new

On the other hand, there are societal pressures which often encourage you to associate with people who appear to be like you (physically) even if you aren't like them culturally. I run into this frequently as I am an expat in Japan. I'm married to a Japanese woman and speak Japanese. I'm much more comfortable with my wife's family and with my Japanese friends than I am with the expat community. But that community (which exists by choice) is often critical of people who choose to leave it.

Oh I agree. Once segregation has become the cultural norm it comes from all sides, including the segregated.

In terms of your situation, you need to try to tease apart what the expats are saying. If it is all segregationist rumbles pay no heed and carry on. Or perhaps what they are saying is that you are trying too hard to integrate. Your true Japanese friends will accept you for who you are, and do not mind the differences. Do not change just f

I have to concur, unfortunately, although it isn't as widespread as it once was. Mainly small towns. There are still a handful of privately owned "Whites-only" restaurants. I live about 5 miles from one. There is a sign, "blacks go to the back". If any blacks come, they are served from the kitchen back door. The restaurant is the owner's personal property so it is perfectly legal. He also refuses service to anyone who isn't "dressed nice". Its...unique, like a time machine. He isn't a mean guy, he's one of

I always find it interesting when I meet white people in Japan who think that Japan is really racist. From my perspective it's about the same as most countries. The only real difference is that white people from western countries have often never experienced being a visible minority before. It can be shocking. The really sad part about it is that these people often simply return home without realizing their privilege of being in a majority.

Tax revenue as a percent of GDPhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP

Germany 40%, US 27.

Government spending as a percent of GDP (includes previous chart sort of)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending

Germany 43. US 39.

Tax rates in the current economic climate don't mean much. To balance all the US governments (and sub entities) books you'd need to collect revenue at the same rate as the germans, which would increase taxes by 44%. The Germans to cover a

Ironic isn't it- in america our government spends the same amount as the germans, but we don't get a tenth of the frills from our government. meanwhile we're demanding they ask for less of our money. I don't know how stupid we must be to not look at those numbers and recognize how obviously effed our system is.

For the services you get you need to pay whatever percent in tax. On average you pay some current percent in tax (regardless of occupation). Since IT is not a particularly exceptional position the overall average data more or less applies. Expect to be taxed at roughly the rate given.

The deficits only come into play because you can't just compare tax rates. The current US effective tax rate of 27% is way off from it's outlays, so it's obviously anomalou

Assuming you properly converted the $US into euros, I have to point out that most of the salaries listed would be taxed at over 40%, not to mention your VAT of around 15% on most things, correct? Europeans like to point out that our income tax tops out at a mere 35.5%, as if that is a bad thing. But if your point is that our increasingly fascist government is wasteful, then I agree. We should be able to provide the crappy services we have with about half the income tax.

I just want to add that that tax maximum leaves out all the other taxes that we pay. State, local, Social Security, Medicare, property (varies by location), and a uncountable other taxes and "fees". So, the comparisons are often not apples to apples, not to mention uneven due to cost of living differences.

These numbers are only "Base Salary", they don't include additional compensation such as Health Insurance or Pension benefits which generally add quite a bit to an employee's total compensation.
I have worked for 7 companies in my life, zero of which have paid Pension benefits. Some of them have paid matching 401k, but that pales in comparison with an actual pension offering.
Health Insurance is always a nice "offering" that the companies say is a benefit, but when you look at the truth of it, you are the

Not sure what you mean by that; it's part of the total package. My point was that in Germany you pay for it out of base salary (as taxes), in the US you pay for it as reduced base salary but added insurance coverage.

that pales in comparison with an actual pension offering

I've had both and will take matching 401k every time. Pension involves vesting, which often means that if you resign or are laid off you lose the pension. 401k is yours. Plus you'll do better with an IRA or 401k in the long run (unless you have a extremely generous retirement plan like the ones

I've had both and will take matching 401k every time. Pension involves vesting, which often means that if you resign or are laid off you lose the pension. 401k is yours. Plus you'll do better with an IRA or 401k in the long run (unless you have a extremely generous retirement plan like the ones that are driving states and municipalities bankrupt).
I would tend to agree, but I wish they would match the same amount as they put towards a pension. The problem with pension is that later down the road, when you

I'm not "ignorant of the cost", the difference is that costs are SHARED among everybody. That's what the welfare system is for. What about the healthcare for the unemployed in the US? Do they stand in line like beggars in front of some charity organization?

And look at the yield of German Bunds, it's lower than the yield of US Treasuries. So what's the house of cards that's collapsing?

What about the healthcare for the unemployed in the US? Do they stand in line like beggars in front of some charity organization?
No, they go to the hospital, just as they have done since long before the whole Universal Healthcare proposition.

And then any assets they do have are taken as they are forced into bankruptcy, and then the government is left footing the bill. Because the government is insuring these visits there is a layer of socialized medicine happening, except that the hospitals and governments then fight over how much money should be paid and so on.

The thing is, if you're poor in the US, or old, you get medicare or medicaid which are both, on the scale of things decent enough. It's the people who are not quite poor and not quite

Mid-to-high level. My title is "Software Development Supervisor". Basically 75% actual development and related tasks, 15% developer support (i.e. "Hey, YttriumOxide, why doesn't this code I wrote work?" from a hundred or so third parties) and 10% management of a small team of other people doing roughly the same thing.

I'm entry to senior level (3 years university work, 1 year company work) making ~ 55000 €. Would you consider that as good?

Hmmm... I'd consider it "about right" I guess. You're still young after all, so that's probably around the figure I'd expect if you were to join my group for example. In another five years time, I'd hope that'd be significantly higher though (even if you're doing the exact same work).

I disagree with the author's take on 'ageism' - I bet that if skill sets were taken into account, the apparent ageism would disappear.

There are two kinds of 'old fart' in this biz - ones that doggedly refuse to learn new skills, and those that actively seek out and embrace new skills but have the hindsight and experience to see them in their proper place among the existing tried-and-true solutions. Too often I see young, inexperienced developers grab on to the latest thing, declaring it the be-all and end-all of programming. I've seen it a million times - their fervor eventually gets tempered by seeing that their shiny new toy isn't perfect and has more rough edges that advertised. I went thru it in my 20's, as did everyone else, I suspect. I'm old enough now to have seen the "Thin Client! No, Thick client! No, Thin Client!" pendulum swing a few times.:-( (For those of you too young, that would be "thin=Mainframe+terminal, thick=Borland Delphi, thin=web app, thick=phone app).

The consulting company I work for respects the type II old fart and values their experience. Apparently our clients do as well, since we're in high demand.

Speaking as a fellow old fart, I remember being in a constant state of panic when ever a new technology came out because it meant that if I didn't somehow get on the job experience with the technology, I would be left in the dust (unemployed). And back in the 90s, if you didn't learn something new and switch jobs, you were considered unwilling to learn new things and grow - now you're considered a "job hopper".

And back in the early 90s, employers wanted the "shiny new toys" because they thought they could throw out the very expensive mainframes and go all client server - and many did.

Anyway, you have to chase all the new tech. It is a must in this industry. I wish I did it more!

Here's an example: when the whole iOS/iPhone thing was first kicked off by Apple, I poo-pooed it. "Here we go again. Another handheld failure!" The folks who latched on at the beginning - jumping on that shiny new toy - go their first and built up the experience and some of very profitable businesses now.

This time, my experience led me astray and I missed out on getting a big slice of the pie - there are just crumbs left.

Then again, I bet there are some RIM developers that are shaking their heads now and thinking, "Wait and see."

This industry is so volatile and capricious that it's impossible to know what's going to be worth while and what isn't. I mean back in the 90s, I used to laugh at the Mac developers for chasing Windmills. I used to laugh at mainframer COBOL guys but there's quite a few still making a living - a nice one at that.

I thought I was hot shit for being a UNix/client server/C/C++ programmer - then Java came.

Yes and no... in certain areas of the industry, absolutely. But when you start getting into fairly high-performance or large-scale systems, a lot of the abstractions start breaking down. When that happens, you need people who know what's going on under the hood as well.

This industry is so volatile and capricious that it's impossible to know what's going to be worth while and what isn't

True. But there are some crazy old guys who don't believe in using the interent, and that building your website to support mobile is a waste.

You can viably be and older person in management or a technical area and do fine. What you can't do is decide that all this 'innovation' is really bad for the industry and bury your head in the sand. Being wrong about the next big thing is different than believing that there should be no next big thing. Being in academia we have a lot of the guys who believe in usi

But there are some crazy old guys who don't believe in using the interent, and that building your website to support mobile is a waste.

Funny you should say that. I see the demand for mobile-enabled web sites diminishing in the face of everyone wanting having to have "an app for that" (both retailers and customers, oddly). Better control of the user experience, better customer tracking, etc. You'd think the customers would prefer the anonymity and familiarity of a web site, but they apparently value other fe

I'm old enough now to have seen the "Thin Client! No, Thick client! No, Thin Client!" pendulum swing a few times.:-( (For those of you too young, that would be "thin=Mainframe+terminal, thick=Borland Delphi, thin=web app, thick=phone app).

No, I'm saying that given my observations over several decades of work and my own experience, ageism is not as rampant as was depicted in the article and is more often than not a situation that individual workers create for themselves by refusing to learn new things. Reread my post - if skill sets were included in the criteria, ageism would disappear into the noise.

So staff jobs have been losing pay while managers have been gaining. Why can't we stop this trend? It's not as if managers have increased in performance over 2 years while staff workers have decreased.

I think he was claiming that the income in question wasn't really really widening as a gap.

All of the numbers under discussion are well under the top 1%, and are, in fact, barely pushing top 10%.

From my perspective being able to get into the top 10% of wage earners with 30 years experience, or 25 and a masters or some luck etc. is pretty reasonable. Where the US especially seems to be having problems is the people who make 350K+ per year are growing wealth much faster than everyone else. Now you can certa

So staff jobs have been losing pay while managers have been gaining. Why can't we stop this trend? It's not as if managers have increased in performance over 2 years while staff workers have decreased.
This is because of the arbitrary lines that HR draws on how much a position can pay. They base it on surveys such as this one. Then if some hotshot developer wants more money, HR says no, and if the bossman wants to give him a raise, he has to change the developers title to manager. Number of reports? Zero.

Despite having so many categories, "Software Engineers" and "Software Developers" seem to be the bucket that catches all the people making a living creating software, but belong the category of "software skills are necessary but sufficient". In almost all branches of science, the "numerical simulation" has become very very important. We are graduating some 100,000 Masters in engineering and may be 25000 Ph Ds in engineering and a majority of them write code. Some very well, some very poorly but their programming skills is secondary to their knowledge of physics, chemistry and math. They all are likely to be paid way above this reported mean and clubbing them with "software kills alone are enough" group distorts the data.

Not that much more. A PhD in physics, chem or maths is mostly in the professor bracket. Which typically cap out in the 160k range as a full prof with 30 years experience. But you start at 50-70 and claw your way up from there. Engineering is a bit more than that, but not a lot. You can make more than that in industry of course, but the vast majority of PhD's in science are still academic type jobs.

The useful information lies in the summary at the bottom of each page.

"Software engineers, however, saw an almost 3% increase â" slightly higher than inflation." "project leaders, and analysts all enjoyed raises that outpaced inflation" "the southern states and the mountain time zone saw the biggest percentage increases in salary" "Additional bonuses were inversely proportional to the size of the group"

In other words, MOST positions are NOT keeping up with inflation, and bonuses are given out to only a few people (no way to track who deserves them.) But we knew that already, because the CEOs get most of the bonus money.

Salary survey reveals that in in the midst of the deepest and longest recession the world has seen in two generations, some salaries are coming down off the stratospheric highs they reached during the dot com bubble.

In a world where around 30% of people live on less than $2 a day, being able to earn something like 100x that amount of money says to me something very different than "we're f*cked."

In a country in which it's illegal to be broke, and in which the economic situation is clearly getting worse year by year, you're not seeing the picture. You are aware that there's people starving right here in the good old US of A?

Yes, I am aware of that, more so than most, because my workplace and church are in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Cleveland, Ohio, which is among the poorest cities in the U.S., which has among the highest rates of concentrated poverty in the developed world.

Even so, very few people are actually starving, and those people are not making 90k per year. Most of those who suffer from malnutrition and actual hunger are the children of substance abusers and/or the working poor who do not qualify for most f

Still quite underpaid, still desperately hoping working for my current startup will pay off eventually, even though they haven't shown the least likelihood of extending any equity or options my way whatsoever (and I'm employee #5). I often wonder if I'm a fool for staying, but I just bought a house and I don't want to be seen as a job hopper the next time I go for interviews, so I'm sticking it out for at least two years. Is this a good plan?
I was probably employee #5 or 6 at one point, but now that a few

So... was it worth it? Tenure alone does not pay the bills, after all.
So far, no. I mean, I still get paid enough to put food on the table and pay most of my bills. I used to be able to pay all my bills, but inflation happened and salary increases didn't, so now I realistically make about 40% less than I did when I started. But, they keep promising and I am gullible enough to believe them.

What's the difference between a Software Developer and a Software Engineer?

A software developer will be primarily concerned with writing code from the given requirements. A software engineer is concerned with the entire process of producing high quality code, how that code fits into the business, how the requirements are established, how bugs are tracked over time, ensuring code reviews are effective, that testing coverage is appropriate without costing too much, how projects are managed, creating and using metrics, and of course writing high quality code.

What's the difference between a Software Developer and a Software Engineer?

A software developer will be primarily concerned with writing code from the given requirements. A software engineer is concerned with the entire process of producing high quality code, how that code fits into the business, how the requirements are established, how bugs are tracked over time, ensuring code reviews are effective, that testing coverage is appropriate without costing too much, how projects are managed, creating and using metrics, and of course writing high quality code.

Hmmm... I've always thought of it more as:

- Programmer: Writes code from given requirements. Essentially a replaceable part in the machine of turning caffeine in to lines of code.

- Software Developer: Writes high quality code; makes decisions about implementation details that aren't in the spec provided; deals with QA; technology expert on custom systems/hardware/interfaces/etc that the software must work with; assists documentation and QA teams with technical insight.